Why Physical Therapists Give At-Home Exercise Programs
Have you ever wondered why physical therapists insist on at-home exercise programs? It might seem like those few hours in the clinic should be enough, but there’s a bigger reason behind these take-home instructions. Your progress doesn’t just happen in those sessions—it’s what you do outside of them that can make or break your recovery.
I am Lauren Masi, a physical therapist and Board Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist. I’m also the owner and Clinical Services director of Bay Area Physical Therapy and Lafayette Physical Therapy. Today we’re going to talk about why physical therapists give a home exercise program.
You’re at Home More Than You’re with Your Physical Therapist
First and foremost, we can’t do your exercises for you. We need to make sure that our patients are motivated and involved in their care.
You might be in the clinic maybe two hours a week when you’re in an active physical therapy program. That’s where we are watching you and holding you accountable to all those things we’ve taught you like good posture, how you’re walking, how you’re moving in your sports, etc.
But otherwise, there’s a lot of time left in the week where you can go and mess things up or undo the good that we’ve tried to impart upon you.
Home Exercise Programs Are Tailored to Your Needs
In the beginning of physical therapy, we see the things that you need help with that you can’t do, and the things that might be contributing to your ailments, and we try to help you learn better behaviors and break those bad habits.
As we all know, breaking bad habits can take a while. It might even take a couple weeks to make sure that you’re not undoing some of the good things that you’re working on in therapy when you’re at home.
Also, we need to have you start making lasting changes to your tissues through the strength and flexibility exercises that we might be issuing to you to make those benefits stay.
Strength Takes Time to Build and Is Easy to Lose
One thing we do know is that, on a cellular level, it takes about six to eight weeks to see strength changes in muscle cells and as little as seven days to start losing it. That’s crazy. So, in terms of being consistent with your home exercise program, we’re trying to mitigate this and make positive progress.
Two times a week is the minimum exercise to maintain your gains and strength. In general, we prefer three to four times a week to make gains with your strengthening, and that does include the rest time that’s needed in between.
So again, if we’re thinking about having one day on, one day off, that ends up being about three to four times per week that you’re doing your home strengthening program. Typically, I encourage my patients to try to do their home exercise program five to six times a week when they’re in active rehab because I know that life happens, and you might miss a couple days in there during the week.
Do You Have to Continue Your Home Exercise Program Once You’re Done with Physical Therapy?
I also unfortunately expect that my patients, upon discharge, are going to be good about doing their programs for maybe the first month or two. If I’m lucky, by months three and four, they’re probably down to half of what they were doing when they were actively in physical therapy care with me. And by six months, they’ve probably totally forgotten about their home exercise program, but hopefully they’re back to their normal level of exercise and activity.
The problem can arise that, if you are one of those people who didn’t have a great strengthening program as a part of your daily activity before you came to physical therapy, then that six-month mark might be when pains or other issues start creeping back in.
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If you think you need help determining what you should be doing at home to maintain your health, or if you have a pain or injury you need help recovering from, please reach out to our physical therapists today at (925) 284-3840.